> Approach Eng  >  Tail Belt to Shaft Drive Adapter Kit	Printable Version

Tail Belt to Shaft Drive Adapter AP200 Core to each fuselage manufactured is making it compatible with the current trend of helicopter mechanics. While the development for the Apache fuselage was performed using a shaft driven helicopter, Approach Engineering needed a solution to allow the popular belt driven Raptor and other tail belt driven models to be fitted to their fuselages. AP200  Tail Belt to Shaft Drive Adapter Kit  $169.00

Approach Engineering has spent nearly a year in development of this shaft drive tail conversion kit to ensure that installing it would be straight forward, it would perform reliably with glow engines well into the 50 class and most importantly, it would not fail from the traditional poor design integration commonly seen on other fuselage flexible tail drive systems in the 30-50 class. The tail drive adapter is in its third major design revision and its second fully tested production version.

Over the years we have seen different companies offer a flexible tail drive shaft system for various 30-60 size glow powered models. They all have flown but inexperienced modelers commonly suffered anything from tail slippage to complete tail failure in flight which nearly always resulted in a complete loss of the fuselage. Approach Engineering has successfully designed and thoroughly tested their tail drive shaft adapter on the Raptor for over 50 flights in various types of wind and flying styles. Through this rigorous testing, some of the flying was intentionally aimed at breaking the tail drive system with hard pirouettes and those sudden stops and we have to say that so far all of our attempts have failed to break the system. Keep in mind that after each vigorous test, key failure points were checked, specificially set screws and pins that hold gears. Regular inspection of these set screws is an important part of keeping your model flying over time.

In examining the system, we believe this is a superior design for two key reasons. First, the flexible tail shaft is only formed around one curve as opposed to using the flexible shaft without the tail drive adapter where it must curve twice. Secondly, there are two areas that can absorb stress on the system, in the flexible cable itself and in the short tail belt from the main gear to the adapter.

Modelers getting started with an Approach Engineering Apache fuselage or any fuselage that requires a low tail shaft take-off and flexible tail drive shaft will be very happy with their tail drive conversion kit. Care still must be taken during the assembly and installation of the flexible tail shaft following best practises and it must be properly supported both along the fuselage tail and at both ends.